AN ABJECT PRINCE.
THE "interview" which the German Crown Prince gave to an American correspondent, and which was summarized in the Times of Tuesday, is one of the most curious, and for us (from the military point of view) one of the most encouraging, incidents in the war. The Crown Prince has evidently got his tail down—so
hard down that one wonders if it will ever come up again. To say that is to speak merely in the casual spirit which the Crown Prince affected in part of the interview when he remarked: "It is a pity that all cannot be gentlemen and sportsmen, even if wo aro enemies." But we feel that the reproachful terms of a good sportsman who is disappointed in his enemy cannot be our model in expressing our opinion of the Crown Prince. It would be very agreeable, if war were still allowed by the Germans to have the generous and chivalrous touch of even mediaeval times, to reciprocate as far as possible time Crown Prince's sporting language. Normally it goes sorely against the grain, when a man who has disgraced himself by unsportsmanlike conduct seems inclined to apologize and to promise reform, not to encourage him to go further. But in this case it is impossible either to forget the devilish injury which the Crown Prince, and his father, and his fellow-leaders have done to the civilized world, or to accept with a pretence of patience what the Crown Prince says in the rest of the interview. The rest of the interview is indeed a pitiful appeal for mercy from the men to whom the Crown Prince swore to show no mercy. It is a humiliating performance ; it is humiliating to the man who thus speaks, and it produces a sense of humiliation, for the sake of their common manhood, in any one who reads the Crown Prince's words. We confess that we could have more respect for a fire-breathing professor of frightfulness than for the Crown Prince in this abject mood. Count Beventlow, or Count Zeppelin, or Admiral Tirpitz, we imagine, would continuo to urge frightfulness to the last syllable of recorded time. " We have always preached frightfulness and we shall perish in that cause, believing in it to the end." But the gorge rises at the spectacle of a man who talks of sportsmanship after renouncing all the laws of the game. Tho " bad loser " does not know what sportsmanship means. Tho Crown Prince appears as the worst loser with whom the history of war has made us acquainted. Even while he pitifully appeals to be let off easily he maliciously attributes all the blame for what is happening to those who have taken his punishment in hand. Walking delicately before his American interviewer, he amiably says that he has had, and hopes that he still has, many friends in England. Let him not be mistaken on that point. He has not got a single friend in England. Any one who might have been inclined to think of the possibility of forgetting his official sanction of crime will be hardened by his despicable message to American readers.
The Imperial Chadband begins on the dreadfulness of war as though it had been thrust on innocent German victims by the militarism of other countries :-
" Have you had a chance to see enough of this dreadful business ? ' the Crown Prince asked, ' or does your heart already ache enough over tho sorrows which have descended upon this bad region of the earth ? What a pity, what a pity, it is ! All this terrible extinction of human life is blasting the hope and expectancy of youth, and mortgaging our energies and resources far into the future. It is not alone for German lives, for wasted German energies, that we mourn. We are well able, at least comparatively well able, to bear it. Bat all the world, including America, which has invested in the Entente's chances of success, will have to aid in footing the bill. That, of course, is one reason why the sympathies of your capitalists are with our enemies. isn't there a book which says, " Whore the treasure is, there the heart is " Y ' " Who would suppose from the evidence of these words that they came from a member of the Imperial House which for many years had
rattled the sabre whenever it desired to make a diplomatic point ; which had kept Europe in continual dread of war ; which had provoked and hectored France year after year ; which had torn up the public law of Europe when it incited Austria to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina; and which finally refused to stay its hand when at the last moment before the war Lord Grey desperately offered to consider any reasonable proposal for the sake of peace ?
The Crown Prince goes on :—
" Tell me, of all the generals, all the men, you sea on this front, is there one who has not bewailed the dreadful necessities pressed upon us by this combat ? You saw yesterday many horrible instruments of destruction wo are using—our heavy projectile shells, shrapnel, grenades, liquid fire, bayonets, and knives. You know something of the labours with which we are perfecting the effectual use of those instruments. I hope you have not failed to be impressed with the fact that every general, every officer, every man, would far rather see all this labour, skill, education, intellectual resource, and physical prowess devoted to the tasks of upbuilding and lengthening life, subduing the common enemies of men—disease and material obstacles to the progress of man- kind—rather than devoted to the destruction of other men."
No one need doubt that every German officer and man would prefer to see military effort directed at this moment to any other object than prolonging the war. But who introduced the " horrible instruments of destruction " which are chiefly to be deplored in this war ? Who broke every law and custom of war, and infamously and cruelly seized the unfair advantage of using poisonous gas and liquid fire ? Who bombarded open towns on the coast, and dropped bombs indiscriminately on the civilian population of great industrial centres ?
The Crown Prince reached the sickening limit of his feeble effrontery when he said, in complaining of the alleged American unfriendliness to Germany :—
" It is true you file protests against British interference with your commerce, British rifling of your mails and intrusions in your domostio affairs. But those seem to be more matters of form ' • they moan nothing. When, however, wo Germans deem ourselves forced by tho exigencies of this moral combat to take measures of self-protection which are not agreeable to you you denounce us as' barbarians.' You excuse acything on the part of England, but 1303n1 incapable of making any allowance whatever for conditions which impel us to exert to the uttermost our resources for defence."
The words " mere matters of form " are accidentally well chosen. The examination of mails and intrusion in domestic affairs are matters of form and do " mean nothing " when compared with the sending of innocent men, women, and children to the bottom of the sea without a word of warning. They truly mean nothing when compared with the tearing up of treaties, the shooting of hostages, the massacre of suspected persons without trial, the burning of towns as a method of intimidation in a conquered territory, and the bodily deportation of civil populations.
With these crimes on the conscience of his country the Crown Prince says :-
" We are all tired of the bloodshed. We all want peace. England is the Power responsible for the continuation of the hopeless effort to crush us. In this twentieth century of the Christian era mankind might have been expected to have arrival at some maturity of thought and behaviour. No one can witness, as you during the last fortnight have witnessed, the spectacle presented by this appalling sacrifice, this in- conceivable suffering, preposterously out of proportion to any result obtained, without wondering whether reason has fled from the earth."
We are tired of the bloodshed. We are so tired of it that we intend that the men who had the power in 1914 to force this horror on the world out of their callous and insensate ambition shall never have that power again. We shall fight on, not in order to patch up a temporary mode of living in the same world with Germany that will give her the opportunity to force the horror on the world a second time, but in order to dictate terms to her rulers that will actually make reason return to the earth.
The sentimental interest of the Crown Prince in peace now is as deeply discreditable to him as his cruel boastings were a year or two years ago. His new mood, like his former mood, has. its object. He assumes the beggar's whine. He craves peace. But to those who know the ways of the professional wrongdoer the very voice is not an appeal to pity, but a challenge to watchfulness in the interests of law-abiding men.
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